Luganda Literature teaching and development of life skills among secondary school students in Lubaga division

Abstract

In spite of life skills education being vital in Uganda’s education system, it has all along been neglected to the extent that our students during and after graduating from the school system, have a lot of difficulty in asserting themselves before the public because they lack self esteem and self confidence among other life skills. As a contribution to avert the above problem, the researcher investigated how Luganda literature could be used to develop skills like; orientation abilities, Perception abilities, communication abilities, creative thinking abilities as well as critical thinking abilities among secondary school students. The study therefore aimed at establishing the role of Luganda written literature to the developing of life skills, establishing the contributions of plays/drama to the developing of life skills and the teachers’ role in the development of these skills among students.

The study was conducted in the six government aided secondary schools in Lubaga Division, Kampala district. It adopted a cross-sectional research design which enabled the researcher to collect data in a couple of weeks. Primary data were collected from 164 respondents (language students and their teachers) using questionnaires and observational guides.

Results revealed that students are positively impacted through Luganda literature, hence developing their life skills which help them handle real life situations. It was further found out that Luganda teachers play a significant role in developing life skills among their students although in most cases they tend to be more inclined to approaches geared towards making students pass Luganda literature examinations at all levels. This limits the development of life skills among students due to increased pressure for academic excellence as a consequence of the entire Uganda’s education system being examination oriented.

The researcher therefore recommends that Luganda language among other indignant local languages should be used as the media of instruction to instill life skills among the youths especially at the Secondary school levels because other foreign languages including English, cannot bring out real meaning of those skills to the young people.